


Hand in Hand, Side by Side

by fluffernutter8



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Skating, F/M, Steggy Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 04:51:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15332175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: ...it was a mark of the gruff affection that he held for Peggy that Phillips didn’t think about the ulcer-inducing process of tracking down a teenaged boy who was willing to be a pairs ice skater and replied only, “I’ll find someone.”AKA the pairs skating AU no one wanted





	1. Chapter 1

Steve should never have been recruited. He had doctor’s orders to find some exercise to build his stamina and he saw the way his mom winced when she looked at the prices for membership at the nearest pool so he suggested skating instead. The old rink near their house had cheap rentals, so every week Steve made his way over, trading four crumpled ones in exchange for a pair of scuffed skates far past being broken in. He should have skated the perimeter of the rink for a few months, moving from careful and nervous, barely balancing, to increased confidence even without the lessons he could ill-afford, before the experiment was halted.

Except: Abe Erskine had a cousin in Brighton Beach who wouldn’t stop pushing for him to be allowed to emigrate, and finally, in the last months of the USSR, his visa was stamped and he entered the United States. When they asked his occupation at the airport, some exhausted woman with braids piled on her head who didn’t seem to particularly care about the answer wrote down what he said - “Ice skating coach” - even though “Dissident” was the more recent and accurate job title. He hadn’t been to an Olympics since before Sarajevo, and most people didn’t know him anymore, the name only recalled by the occasional ardent skating fan. But he had been able to scrape together a roster of students, and it was while trying not to wince as a talented but mechanical student named Dottie Underwood took all the love out of a Swan Lake program, that he noticed Steve.

He was attempting a jump, something like a toe loop that he had no business trying and was fumbling through quite badly. But the vivid concentration alight on his face was exactly the same as a young girl Erskine had known from the time she was seven until the time she ascended the highest tier of the Olympic podium, and so, after Dottie had packed up and left precisely on time, Erskine found himself going over to where Steve sat on the bench at the intersection of the shadows of the American and Canadian flags. And as Steve unlaced his skates, Erskine offered the question: “Have you ever thought about being coached?”

Steve laughed through the first inquiries, and Steve’s mother laughed, exhaustedly, through the next. Steve was sickly, untrained, and don’t think she didn’t know how much coaching and competition would cost.

“I promise,” said Erskine, who would be going home to a barely heated apartment and once again filling the spaces in his belly with tea, “that you will never have to pay more than your four dollars a week.”

And Steve, who had blocked out as best he could the joy of a smooth pass around the rink, a new trick invented and mastered, because he knew that it would end, said, “If you can keep that promise, Mr. Erskine, then I’d like to try.”

Sarah Rogers paid her four dollars, and Erskine and Steve worked early morning and darkening evenings, skirting Steve’s school schedule and doctor’s appointments and necessary afternoons off because Bucky needed to see some new movie or because maybe Steve couldn’t breathe too well, but he was fast and that was important on a baseball team.

But over the months, despite the breaks, despite the youth, despite the rundown practice facility and the secondhand skates that Erskine had bought for Steve so at least he’d own a pair, somehow Steve became good. They waited a week, two weeks, a month, after the first time someone other than Erskine or Bucky or Sarah Rogers watched Steve try a spin or a jump and cocked their head in unintentional surprise and couldn’t look away. And then, the winter Steve was eleven, Erskine made a phone call because he’d always known that a solo career wasn’t sustainable if he was going to keep his promise to Sarah Rogers.

He and Chester Phillips didn’t generally bother with pleasantries, a good thing as excitement slid through tired veins.

“Phillips,” he said instead, “if your girl is still looking for a partner, I think I have one.”

* * *

Peggy skated for the first time when she was small, sliding minutely along the pond at the back of their property, her hands gripped by her brother. Her mother acquiesced easily to lessons when she asked for them, and less easily to hiring a proper coach for her after Peggy presented a carefully researched file of the best options.

That coach recommended Phillips when the Carters announced that they would be moving to New York. Peggy was technically an American citizen - her mother had joined her father on a business trip and Peggy had been a bit too eager to be born - but the only thing that felt like a homecoming was entering her new rink each day. The smell of feet and sweat and cold, while not pleasant, was the same all around the world.

A year into working with Phillips, he told her that she was good, very good, but she was almost certainly not going to become a professional as a figure skater.

He took in the set of her jaw and held back a smile. He had known she’d get stubborn about it. “Don’t think of it as an insult, think of it as strategy. We need to get you in a smaller pond.”

Her jaw slackened, her shoulders dropped. “Pairs?” she asked, because she picked up quick.

He gave her a bared-tooth grin, blink and miss it, before he said, “Hope you weren’t in the sport for the fans. You’ll have to work up to national skill before you skate to a stadium of more than moms and dads.”

But she ignored this. “Who’s meant to partner me?”

And it was a mark of the gruff affection that he held for Peggy that Phillips didn’t think about the ulcer-inducing process of tracking down a teenaged boy who was willing to be a pairs ice skater and replied only, “I’ll find someone.”

They went through three boys before Abraham Erskine walked into the rink, which felt a bit like tossing away rubies because only diamonds would do. But Daniel was too tentative, dependent on her to lead so that they were always a bit off, and Jack preferred showing off his own skills to working in tandem, and Eddie tried to catch her in the changing room and had to be sent away with a broken nose. Finally Phillips introduced his old friend and the old friend introduced his floppy-haired student walking in behind him.

“You think this twig’s good enough to partner my girl?” Phillips boomed.

Peggy watched the new boy; she expected him to wince. Instead he said, voice quiet and sure, speaking from experience rather than bravado, “If I say I can do it, I can do it.” And somehow Peggy found herself believing him.

* * *

Steve was used to making do, and he’d known for a while that he’d have to skate pairs if he wanted to compete. It was useless to complain or wish for things to be different, because this was what he had.

Except that it turned out that what he had was pretty wonderful.

Peggy was a better skater than he was, but she wasn’t cruel or snobbish about it. She didn’t pity him, either, just worked hard and dared him to catch up.

“That was good,” she would say when he’d landed a difficult jump or had a successful run-through of a program, her voice appreciative rather than condescending, and it startled a grin out of him every time.

He’d thought he’d be nervous around her, just trying to keep his head down and avoid embarrassing himself in front of this unknown and talented girl with her British accent and her Manhattan apartment. But instead he found that he wanted to be friends with her. They came up with a secret handshake for before and after skating, and found out what each other’s favorite candies were. He introduced her to his mother and Bucky. She trained him in how to recognize a phone number by listening to the buttons’ tones, and he taught her about the best ways to catch popcorn or grapes in your mouth.

Steve had hoped to have a good partner. He had never imagined that he would get Peggy.

* * *

They had a cheering squad for when they competed locally: the Carters, Steve’s mother if she wasn’t scheduled to work, Bucky and whichever of the Barnes siblings or cousins were looking to tag along, and eventually Peggy’s friend Angie. When they went abroad for their first attempts at more major competition, Peggy’s mother came, as did the coaches, so the number of people who actually watched them skate into sixth place was more limited. 

They went up to Canada for their first Junior Worlds. Steve was glad that it wasn’t any farther: no matter how many times Erskine assured her that girls and their families often paid a male partners’ expenses, his mother was already uncomfortable with the Carters covering skates and costumes, much less intercontinental travel. They scored eighth, and when Steve came home, for the first time since Erskine had first proposed the idea, Sarah Rogers asked him if perhaps it was time to stop dreaming.

She recognized immediately the look in his eyes, the willful fire that she’d first seen when he was a baby with a body fighting itself, when the doctor had shaken his head and said helplessly, “Just try to take care of him, Mrs. Rogers.” 

“I’m not going to let us down like that,” he said. She was used to Steve being part of an us - it had been him and her for his entire life, and him and Bucky for only a slightly shorter time - but for the first time she realized he had that with Peggy too, a partnership formed from ice and hours and more defeats on the way to greater victories.

The next time she had an afternoon off, Sarah went to the rink and watched Steve and Peggy try a new lift. He nearly dropped her the first time, forcing her to recover awkwardly on one skate. She didn’t position herself properly the next time and they became tangled. After every attempt, they clasped hands, nearly unconsciously, and said something teasing so they would both laugh before trying again. It had seemed impossible that someone was more stubborn than Steve, but that was before seeing Peggy Carter set her jaw and look as if she would camp out on the ice rather than leave things unfinished. They were still working on the lift two hours later when Sarah left.

The next year Junior Worlds were in Croatia, and the lift, now perfect, helped them into second place.

* * *

They’d done well enough in their competitions - third at Four Continents, a series of gold medals from smaller events - but the commentators couldn’t hide the doubt in their voices as Steve and Peggy skated out during Worlds for the first time. They were up against more experienced competitors, Peggy was fuller-figured than the average skater, Steve leaner and smaller despite the beginnings of a growth spurt. 

When they rewatched the tape later, they found the broadcast silent for nearly fifteen seconds after their swing medley faded and the two of them stood beaming at center ice. Then came the analysis, words piling over each other as everyone rushed to give shocked compliments. All the contrasts between them, the lowered expectations for what they would be able to do, only magnified the synchronicity and ease and care they had achieved.

Someone stuck a microphone in Steve’s face as he went to track down a Band Aid for a nick to his finger and asked what enabled the two of them to improve so much since their last competition. Another reporter found Peggy putting on a jacket and asked her the same thing.

That night the broadcast ended with a recap of the stunning American upset and a split screen of Peggy and Steve each pausing for half a breath and then saying, “Trust.”

Neither of them actually watched their star moment at the time. They’d found an unlocked door to the roof of their hotel the day before and agreed to meet up there. Peggy carried a thermos of hot chocolate; she often teased Steve that he should mature into either tea or coffee, but tonight she agreed that it would be the perfect thing. When he arrived, he had a package of her favorite shortbread in his pocket, and he wouldn’t tell her exactly where he tracked that down in Nice when they’d spent most of their time at the rink and he didn’t speak French besides.

A breeze blew by and they moved closer. They’d never been particularly touchy with each other: obviously things like lifts and throw jumps could be a bit full contact, but mostly they would brush hands or bump shoulders before and after a skate, do a hug during kiss-and-cry and after the judging. Still, after so much and so long - years of helping each other with homework, pushing each other for just that one more run-through of a routine or to get up and smile through a performance failure, discovering together what a boring nuisance international travel could be and working to alleviate that boredom with a million rounds of Twenty Questions and Truth or Dare - after all that, leaning on each other was unconscious, engrained.

“Hey,” said Steve, knocking his tented knees against hers. He almost diverted himself from what he was about to say, but on a near daily basis Peggy relied on him to toss her in the air, to catch her and support her when she came down. He could trust her with this; it was hers too. “What do you think the odds are that we’ll make it to Salt Lake City?”

She looked out for a moment, curled her hands around her hot cup and sipped. Then she turned to him with a grin. “Whatever the odds are, I wouldn’t bet against us. I don’t lose my bets.”

She’d been in the US for nearly half her life and still sounded so precisely British that, as far as Steve was concerned, she could have arrived at Buckingham Palace without an invitation. He reminded himself that he probably wasn’t allowed to be in love with her.

* * *

Phillips and Erskine brought in a choreographer to help them prepare for the Salt Lake games. Natasha was a former ballerina who looked barely older than the two of them, but she was Russian and in skating and dance, that had meaning.

Peggy loved Natasha immediately. They went out for drinks together when they were in countries where they were old enough. Steve had to build up a sort of tolerance for her; their personalities didn’t mesh automatically, but eventually they became good friends. She made their routines better either way, but worked them harder too. Some nights, Steve and Peggy sat on the bench by the edge of the rink less because of the chats they’d always liked to have as the lights were slowly turned off, and more because the thought of standing and moving to go home sounded unbearably strenuous.

They got a little press in the lead-up to the games - a People sidebar, a mention in the _Times_ spread on the US Olympians - but Michelle Kwan was better known, considered the one to watch if you were going to catch a skating event.

Michelle walked away with the bronze. Steve and Peggy successfully ignored Phillips’s pacing, Erskine’s clenched knuckles, and Natasha’s terrifying stillness, and got through their programs, one to a Ludovico Einaudi piece and the other to “Killer Queen” for variety. In their hugs afterwards, in their exchanged glance, they felt a shared hope that perhaps they could pull this off. Perhaps all those hours of training and travel and listening to Phillips yell would end in more than just the two of them having found each other...

That night, when they couldn’t sleep for smiling, they found themselves on the floor of Steve’s room, holding their medals beside each other, watching the light play off the gold.

“Thank you,” Steve said after a while. “Mostly for never betting against us.”

She thought about saying something cheeky to keep things light. Instead: “Thank you for never giving me a reason to.”

She bumped his shoulder softly. He bumped back, smiling.


	2. Chapter 2

They came back from Salt Lake moderately famous. Their story started to get some traction - partners from such a young age, a defiance of expectations, a surprise home country gold medal - and they’d posed for pictures and given quotes for articles in a way that seemed somehow both glamorous and far more boring than expected.

“You know you’re picking up the check,” Bucky told Steve around a mouthful of hash browns as the third person to request an autograph during their attempt at a quiet Sunday breakfast walked away, goggling. “You could probably trade your signature for a good meal.”

Steve laughed. “Only if the cook’s a tourist,” he said, “and the meal was ordered by someone other than you.”

Bucky ignored him and started on another plate of pancakes.

Life felt busier somehow, although they were still doing all the same things: additional weight training for Steve, private sessions with Natasha to work on movement, touring on the off season and travel for more competitions once the new one started, and practice, always practice, in new rinks and familiar ones. They started getting to think more about choreography, spending nights with their feet propped beside each other on Peggy’s coffee table, listening to samples of different CDs as Steve sketched program options to match. Peggy began to keep Pringles on hand because somewhere along the way she’d learned that Steve considered them a luxury chip and refused to invest in a can himself.

(She was going to have to buy stock in the company, the way he went through them, honestly.)

They entered the season strong: silver at Finlandia, gold at Skate America, a narrow win at Skate Canada that felt especially triumphant.

Erskine died in November, just after they’d returned from NHK. He’d known about the cancer for a while and kept it very quiet.

“Did he even get treatment?” Steve asked the night after the funeral, his hands clutching a beer that he hadn’t even sipped. Peggy had wondered the same thing - sometimes Abe seemed as if he lived at the rink, and he’d certainly never missed a practice - but she knew that it was worse for Steve. He still looked to Erskine first for commentary after a new move or at the end of a run-through, the way she looked at Phillips. Erskine had attended his high school graduation. Steve bought a birthday present for him every March, and Peggy knew for a fact that the first pair of skates he’d owned, the pair Erskine had bought him, still sat long-outgrown on the floor of Steve’s closet.

Peggy rested her cheek against Steve’s shoulder. “Do you remember his face when we were up on the podium?” she asked. Trying to make Steve feel less guilty would be useless. But she could remind him of this: that Erskine had come to the US tired in a way that neither of them had ever experienced, and they had given him all they had for ten years, and proud victory to show for it. Perhaps it had been hopeless or he’d been too tired for fighting in the end, but she didn’t want Steve to forget that their work together had returned to him something precious and once-lost.

He leaned against her hair. They stayed there for a long while. The went into Nationals and Four Continents with renewed purpose.

* * *

On the way to Turin, Steve squeezed Peggy’s hand at takeoff. She squeezed his at landing. It should have been old by now - another airport, another hotel room, locker room, rink, the same faces of their colleagues/competitors - but the Olympics did have a particular energy.

The night after the opening ceremonies they went out with Bucky, who was on leave between tours in Afghanistan. They introduced him to all their skater friends, with whom he was immediately popular, although he claimed that he’d never even flirt with someone who skated pairs, whether they were single or not.

“I’ve been around the two of you for too long,” he shouted over the music, and refused to explain what he meant even when Peggy bullied him.

They spotted Peggy’s parents, decked out incongruously in stars and stripes, and then Bucky in the stands right before the short program. The two of them had a following now, people holding up signs with homemade Carter/Rogers logos and creative flag designs, and they all laughed because Bucky was surrounded by them.

Monday morning they were back, feeling solid after the short program. They’d chosen “Dance at the Gym” from West Side Story for the music, and as they’d seen all season, it seemed that they liked the routine more than anyone, but their scores were respectable and they were ready to earn back the points to put them over the top. 

“Do you see Bucky?” Steve asked quietly as the announcer boomed out their names.

“I’d assume he’s somewhere in the stands. Probably trying to convince some hapless fan to switch allegiances to the Chinese,” Peggy told him, but he caught the carefully hidden worry in her voice. They reached out at the same time and squeezed hands and prepared to skate out.

The first half went perfectly; they slipped easily through the moves that Natasha had convinced Phillips and their new coach, Nick Fury, were neither too challenging nor too modern. But around the second minute of the Bach in G Major, Steve’s eyes, which had been trained to disregard a crowd, somehow brushed past Bucky in the audience. And that glimpse - his best friend’s face looking like it had been replaced by a skeletal imposter - threw him. Peggy sensed it early, before he had actually made any errors. There was something off about his grip as he lifted her; his palm was an inch from where it usually was, that spot she would have known in sleep. But then he doubled what should have been a triple salchow, didn’t quite maintain the precise parallel in the side-by-sides that they were known for, and to the gasps of the crowd, threw her unprepared before the music cued it so that only muscle memory allowed her to land correctly.

The judging blurred by. That they had somehow miraculously secured silver despite the mistakes didn’t matter. Later Steve would think that he knew exactly what happened before Bucky even said anything. His ma had stayed in New York, changing plans last minute because of pneumonia she couldn’t quite shake, although she assured him that it would be fine. She had set up the TV area before he’d even left; he hadn’t thought to make her promise to watch when they’d spoken the night before.

“I just talked to my sister,” Bucky said when Steve, still in skates, found him, and it was Peggy beside him making the sound that Steve couldn’t.

 _I guess that’s what partners do_ , he thought blurrily, and covered his eyes.

* * *

Peggy had never been to Steve’s new place. She’d had to get the address from Bucky because she hadn’t seen her partner since the funeral and he wasn’t returning her calls. It wasn’t far from the apartment he’d lived with his mother, but even from the outside she could tell that it would be smaller and dingier. There was a fair amount of difference between what you could just manage to rent on a nurse’s salary, and what a dozen years of figure skating savings and no job prospects would get you.

Steve swallowed when he opened the door to her, as if he had expected her and a firing squad days ago and was glad to get it over with.

“Anyone would be happy to partner you now,” he said before she could get a word out. “All you’d have to do was ask.”

She stared because she had thought he was depressed and hiding away in grief. The idea that he might be embarrassed, that he might think for even a moment that she would look to trade him in, silenced her.

“Do you think that I wouldn’t have made mistakes if I had been in your situation?” she said after a shaky moment. “Do you not remember that I’ve made mistakes before, even when I haven’t been, and you’ve never held it against me?”

He looked away. “I’ve watched the footage. You deserved the gold.”

“I’ll decide what I deserve,” she spat. “We didn’t have the skate for it in Italy, but we will next time. I skate with you, always, so I’ll see you at the fucking rink tomorrow, Rogers.” She shoved one copy of the CD Natasha had made and silently left for her yesterday against his chest, and returned back to the grimy lobby.

Steve looked distracted when he showed up for practice the next day, but his palm hit that well-remembered place exactly.

* * *

Perhaps the biggest mistake on Peggy’s part was keeping a stiff upper lip. Because by the time she began to wince during turns and look clumsy trying to come down gently from jumps, by the time Steve started watching tape of their practices over and over trying to figure out why Peggy’s perfect edges were deteriorating, it was nearly too late.

The doctor, though clearly judgmental of athletes who played through the pain, moved on quickly to a treatment plan. Phillips was much less gentle, yelling at Peggy before they’d even left the clinic.

“If I’d known you would be so damned stupid about this, I’d never have agreed to train you, and I don’t care if it means trading back ten years of my life and a pair of medals.” He stormed off, probably to smoke one of the cigars he usually just chewed on.

Steve, leaning against the window of the exam room, turned back to Peggy. “They have you scheduled for surgery already?” He knew from experience that when Phillips yelled, even from concern, the easiest way to shake it off was to act casual and let it brush by.

“Yes,” she said. “December.”

“I’ll make sure to bring copies of your house magazine when I come visit.” They were long past Peggy pretending she didn’t have an odd affinity for paging through House Beautiful; they’d been on too many plane rides and long waits together. Except...

“The doctor— My parents— I’m looking at having it done at a clinic in London.” The Carters had moved back there several years before. “They come highly recommended for sports injuries in general, and there’s a specialist who’s an expert in this particular area of surgery. And my mum’s probably been slowly driven mad without anyone to care for, so I think it will work out for the best. For everyone involved.”

She could see the calculation going on in his face, the details of relocating to London. He could do it, he would, she knew that. “Try to use some of your practice time to convince Phillips that I’m less than a war criminal, alright? I’m set to be back on the ice by March, so there’s enough time if you put in the effort.”

“It’s at the top of the list,” he said, and his mouth made a smile, but as soon as a nurse knocked on the door, Steve was excusing himself, and Peggy didn’t think she’d imagined his hand sliding by and missing hers by inches.

* * *

The surgery went well, and Peggy, recuperating in London with her hovering mother, was fine.

Steve, training for no event, lifting sandbags instead of his partner under the eagle gaze of his coaching team, was fine.

He had texted her after the surgery and she’d sent him pictures of her parents’ home and the bell her mother had left which Peggy wouldn’t ring because Mrs. Carter ran into the room looking stricken every time she heard the sound. That was funny, and they were fine.

“Bull _shit_ you’re fine,” Bucky said, because he’d insisted on using rare Skype time to rehash what was going on (going wrong) in Steve’s life.

But Steve, though he usually kept in mind exactly how dangerous Bucky’s situation was and how tenuous the communication, snapped, “Drop it, Buck,” so firmly that he actually did.

They mostly heard from each other through Phillips, who was in touch with her medical team and her coach in London and spoke with Peggy herself about once a week.

“They say she’s doing pretty good. On track to be back in March like she said,” he told Steve the first couple of times. Quickly, though, it turned into, “You’ve got a phone, Rogers, ask her yourself.”

But Steve didn’t.

Peggy came back mid-March. Even her surgical scars, when visible, seemed healed. On the ice it was a different matter.

They were still good. They’d certainly get stares if they went to Central Park. But for competition…

Staying out for the rest of the season had always been part of the plan, but fall came around, and it was barely better. It was not only Peggy’s remaining stiffness, either. Something had gone rotten between them, curdled and sour in a way only more apparent because everything had been exactly right for so long. At NHK, Peggy had to stop in the middle of a skate for the first time in their career, and the entire way home, Steve’s brain filled with things to say, just the right words and the right jokes, because he _knew_ Peggy and he knew how to get her beyond the undeserved guilt for giving up their skate in exchange for taking care of herself. He said nothing.

They pulled themselves over the finish line to the end of the new season but one day Peggy and then Steve walked into the rink and there was a difference in the air. They looked at each other, they looked at Phillips and Natasha, and even Fury could tell that they’d made a decision.

After nearly two decades of working together, it was done.


	3. Chapter 3

It had always been Peggy’s plan to go to law school. She had managed to get her undergraduate degree from a small school through perseverance, tenuous internet connections in a dozen countries, and Steve’s talent for flash cards and figuring out when she needed chocolate. She’d always known skating couldn’t last forever, and law school offered new challenges, a different direction for the dedication and attention to detail she’d been known for as a skater.

And yet, sitting in her apartment with her LSAT prep book in front of her, her highlighters by her side and her phone on silent to avoid distraction, she found herself watching the Rostelecom Cup on the Olympic channel that she thought she’d canceled. She and Steve had never competed there - some of their colleagues said that sport was supposed to be above politics, but how could they travel to a country that Erskine and Natasha could barely speak about? - and yet everything about it was so familiar. She could imagine the chilly echo of the rink, the smooth, controlled glide of her skates on ice as if her body and mind didn’t remember that they were done with such things. 

She ordered pizza and kept watching, her book forgotten on the corner of the couch.

“They’ll try harder for the triple next time, they’re almost there,” she said aloud at one point, and “I’m not sure about him, but I think she’s going to be at the top of the podium one day.”

At the commercial break, she looked down and realized that half the pizza still sat in the box. She couldn’t remember the last time she had had leftovers - even as a skinny kid, Steve _ate_. She couldn’t remember the last time she had commented on a skate to herself instead of leaning over and speaking to Steve, or having him lean to her and say exactly what she’d been about to.

She held her phone in her hand through the next round of skaters, but when the commercials began again, she pulled up Steve’s name and typed _Coffee?_

The text sat lonely for a moment, enough time for her to contemplate how strange it was not to have him at the top of her recent messages with six conversations ongoing at once. Then:

_Usual?_

She smiled.

* * *

Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised her, but when Steve walked into their favorite coffee shop, she couldn’t help but think how attractive he’d gotten.

Steve had been her first crush, back when the mere mention of such things made her curl up her fists out of embarrassment. He had been nice and a good friend, the kind of person whose fists curled automatically just from noticing hers. She had liked his smile and his floppy hair and the way his eyes were so blue.

Steve now, in his jeans and beat up jacket, was the kind of handsome that not only Peggy noticed. He had lost the last of his childhood gauntness, his features filling in and evening out and muscles making their presence known so that as he walked between the tables toward her, people watched him from the corners of their eyes and over the tops of their mugs.

Peggy tried to ignore it. He was more than her best friend, he was her partner, and it had long since ceased to matter exactly what he looked like when no one else had ever supported her in a lift so securely and made her laugh at the same time.

(It didn’t exactly hurt, though.)

They got through some small talk that felt absurd: catching up on her parents, on what Bucky was up to these days, and how the winter was already shaping up to be cold. It was a new experience for them. They had been put together at ages 10 and 11, the excited period of still-childhood when the random questions that served as small talk (best dinosaur, songs that your parents like that are still good) was more interesting than most adult conversation. They grew into lives so integrated that it felt bizarre to trade the information back and forth rather than just _knowing_ through some mysterious osmosis.

Finally, when Steve asked, “So, do you have your LSAT date set?” Peggy was finished with the awkwardness.

“No,” she said. “I’m putting it off. I think we have another medal left in us. Whatever happened, I think we can fix it. And I think we deserve to go to Vancouver.” Her hand rested alone on the table. “Will you come with me?”

He barely hesitated. There was only one answer to give. “If you say we can do it, we can do it,” he told her, and brushed his hand against hers.

* * *

They didn’t tell anyone for a good while. Steve had taken a job as a muralist, painstakingly recreating famous works of art on people’s wall, but any time that he had free, they were practicing. It was different when it was just the two of them: even knowing that it was the beginning of the road to another Olympics, it felt like _fun_. The ambition lay patiently, dormant, waiting to be the energy that would push them forward later. Mostly they just remembered what it was like to enjoy a skate again, to be silly and try new things and show off to make each other laugh. 

They worked hard at it, even with the light-heartedness, taking breaks only so one of them could run to the closest Starbucks every few hours. Peggy still remembered exactly how much cream and sugar Steve insisted on to make his coffee palatable. Steve knew just from a glance when the moment in the late afternoon had come that Peggy was switching to tea.

As a sample, they picked an old Disney medley program they’d done as juniors. The muscle memory came back quickly enough, but over the months they practiced, it became hard to tell whether it was the original memory or the new one they were making now.

When they finished showcasing it for Phillips and Natasha (no need to bring Fury in yet if nothing was going to happen) they stood panting at center ice, hands raised triumphantly. Phillips grunted, eyed them, grunted again. Then Natasha said, “You’re not as good as you were, not even close. But you could become better than you ever have been.”

Natasha didn’t bullshit, but they were already primed to believe that anyway. There was a feeling in them both that they couldn’t explain to anyone else and didn’t need to explain to each other.

* * *

The work was harder than ever before. They no longer had youthful energy or flexibility on their side, and they were a year out of practice. They would end training sessions aching and elderly.

But like Natasha said, they also got better. They got up to quads on what had once been triples. Steve finally - _finally_ \- got rid of his self-conscious habit of making an awkward face mid-program as he remembered the cameras. Peggy spent three weeks in arm movement boot camp and ended up like a ballerina. They would go out for food with the coaching staff after practice and it seemed that even the waitstaff and other diners would smile. It felt like magic in the air, but magic that they were generating through time and effort and faith. 

* * *

They couldn’t keep things a secret for long. In 2002, social media didn’t exist. In 2006, it was barely incipient. They had done official press before, small bits for local news or brief profiles for sports enthusiasts and competition pre-rolls, and had even published a book of photographs and anecdotes from throughout their career that had required a brief book tour. For years, they had noted the growth of fan websites. Sometimes people requesting pictures or autographs would mention that they rewatched videos online or posted on discussion boards, but Peggy and Steve had been away from fame for the past few years. And yet somehow, even in a void of new content, the fans’ interest had continued and, in fact, grown. That there were whole websites - and YouTube channels, and podcasts, and online merchandise shops - devoted to the two of them came as something of a surprise. More of a surprise: that those people were widespread and attentive enough to take a picture of Steve and Peggy laughing side by side as they entered the rink with Starbucks, and post it online with the headline **CarterRogers Reunion?!**

Steve and Peggy mostly ignored the growing excitement as their inclusion in competitions for the new season becomes public knowledge. Natasha became strangely fascinated. One day Steve came across her sitting on a bench beside the rink with her laptop on her knees. Instead of details of their program or the training schedule, he saw that she was looking at YouTube.

“This girl recorded a video of herself saying that she didn’t become a fan until last year and she thought she’s never get to see you live,” Natasha told him. She pointed to the screen. “She’s crying about it.”

Steve, years past any amount of thrill at being desired from afar, shook his head and left her to it. 

(Throughout the season she would keep them updated on the latest, wildest rumors: that they had dropped out of sight after Turin because Peggy had given birth to their baby despite Steve’s objections, or that their separate apartments were a ruse and they really lived together in a cozy Brooklyn brownstone. Strangely, all of the theories seemed to focus on them secretly being a couple and hiding it for unclear reasons. Finally Phillips told her to stop unless someone revealed the fact that Steve was really six hamsters in a good mask and expensive skates.)

* * *

When Phillips suggested therapy, they both balked. They had slipped so easily back into their rightness that disrupting it with reminders seemed wrong.

“Well I’m looking to retire on a high note,” Phillips told them gruffly. “And that means not having whatever—” he waved a hand toward the air between the two of them. “Whatever _trouble_ happened last time come up again.” He handed them a business card. “I made you an appointment. Go fix it. It’s part of your training now.”

Dr. Potts was extremely capable and certainly gave them plenty to think about. But the real discussion happened outside of their sessions.

“Do you still feel guilty for Torino?” Peggy asked, feet propped up as she painted her toenails. She finished the delicate design on a toe and looked over at Steve, washing the plates from their dinner.

“Peg, I’m going to feel guilty for letting you down for the rest of my life,” he told her, making sure that the dishes were tucked in the drying rack the way she liked them before he walked through to join her in the living room. “But that’s not the reason I said yes to coming back. I think we have another medal waiting for us. All that time painting murals just made me remember how much I love skating.” He left it unspoken that skating to him meant doing it with her.

After a while, with one foot completely done, Peggy said, “I’ve a confession.” He looked up from his book. “I went to England just to prove to myself that I could. I needed to know that I could walk away and things would still be alright.”

His mouth twisted. “Guess I proved you wrong there.”

She shook her head. “I should have told you. I was messing about, confusing things. If I’d just been honest…” She looked over at him sitting with sock feet propped up on the arm of her sofa, sticking far out because his body was too long now for her furniture. “This only works if we communicate. I shouldn’t have taken that for granted.”

He turned a page of his book mechanically, considering. “I think,” he said, “that I appreciate it all more now because I took it for granted before.”

“Well, don’t do that again,” Peggy said, shaking out the bottle of polish she was using as a base coat. “I’m meant to be cherished, you know.”

“Believe me,” Steve said, forgetting to even pay attention to his book, “I’m trying my best.”

* * *

It seemed that everything they did, no matter how innocuous or well intentioned, played right into the image being built about them. The cameras caught them before their short program at Oberstdorf, doing the hug that Dr. Potts had recommended to synchronize their breathing and prepare them to go into competition together. A reporter approached Steve before the free skate and asked him how they were going to make a piece of music that had been used by other skaters fresh. “Well, no one else has Peggy Carter,” Steve said easily. “That’ll make the difference.” And when they skated the program, the applause bore him out - as did the videos Natasha pulled up the next week of fans minutely analyzing their facial expressions and body language before, during, and after.

“This puts a lot of pressure on a guy,” Steve commented, trying to pretend that the things the camera had captured, especially the way he looked at Peggy when she wasn’t paying attention - like he’d lucked into something perfect and he needed to double check that everything was still miraculous - was all part of the routine.

Peggy adjusted her skates. “Something to strive for,” she said as she returned to the ice. Only later would she allow herself to think about the way she’d looked hugging Steve at the end: joyous not only from a job well done, exhilarated not only from another skate accomplished alongside her partner after all this time, but mostly comfortable, as if she’d look the same in Steve’s arms on the street or in a coffee shop or at her front door.

Their main competitors quickly became apparent: Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, a sibling duo from Sokovia. They were young - they hadn’t even been out of Juniors that last time Steve and Peggy had been to the Olympics; they had barely been _in_ Juniors when Steve and Peggy had won their gold - but there was something uncanny about their synchronicity that made them tough to beat. The Maximoffs trained in the US also, because Sokovia barely had enough money to rebuild its hospitals and schools much less its ice skating rinks. They ended up running into each other in training and competing against each other more often than not, trading gold and silver places on the podium throughout the season. They were good kids, and they all considered each other friends now, sharing skating tips and going out to eat together. But Vancouver belonged to Peggy and Steve, and the Maximoffs were just going to have to wait.

* * *

They qualified for the Olympic team easily; they’d almost forgotten that was a step at this point. They did some touring and exhibition in the off season, but as fall approached, they began to plan in earnest.

Steve had saved all those old notebooks of routines sketched out between the two of them. He brought them in to Phillips, fully expecting a “You think I have the time for this, Rogers?” Instead, Phillips looked them over, flipped back and looked again, then went to show Natasha. They’d always had a hand in picking elements of their program, but this time they all sat down together and worked on it from the ground up, including new moves they’d been working on, little sparks to have the crowd gasping, and old favorite elements that only the two of them and Peggy’s mum would recognize. One of the things they were known for was their ability to skate to any kind of music, so Phillips tried insisting on their familiar pattern of one classical piece, or at least an instrumental (he kept playing Chilly Gonzales CDs), and then a faster song in a new style for contrast, but they came already agreed on exactly what they’d be skating to.

This was the last time, and they were going to own it.

“We’re never going to be able to listen to this song again,” Peggy remarked, stretching out after a break in the afternoon; they’d spent the day working through the free skate over and over. The concern was understandable, but on the tenth time, on the hundredth, the emotion was right there, an easily accessed river between the two of them. And the first competition they brought it to, the energy from the ovation had them out on Peggy’s hotel balcony when they certainly should have already been asleep.

“Pretty good start,” Steve said with satisfaction. His hand, hanging by the side of his chair, just happened to brush hers.

Even the announcer had sounded excited reading off their scores... “I would think so,” Peggy agreed. She gazed upward, smiling at something.

“You’re making people cry again,” Natasha informed them the next morning, turning her laptop to show them. The video, titled **CarterRogers Are Back: Everything Is Beautiful And Nothing Hurts** , was stopped on a still frame of a young girl tearing up, a shot of their sustained lift from the night before frozen in a box over her shoulder. The video description read, “We finally saw Steve and Peggy’s new program for the first time and it was TYPICAL PERFECTION. The music is an amazing choice for them (and maybe take a listen to the lyrics, just saying...). Let’s break down everything we saw last night as we start on the road to the Olympics.”

“Let’s focus on the road to the Olympics part,” Steve said, but he was still grinning. He and Peggy were back, they had a winning program and plans for a Cary Grant movie marathon when they returned to New York, and one intense fan couldn’t break that.

* * *

The press going into Vancouver was more intense than it ever had been before. Their story had the ups and downs of a movie script, and their rivalry with the Maximoffs was one of the closest competitions to watch. (Apparently their fans weren’t the only ones carefully rewatching their programs from throughout the season - according to a Forbes article that people kept forwarding to the two of them, bookies and sports gamblers were doing close analysis to apply odds, including a careful accounting of whether the St. Lidwina medal Steve had inherited from his mother was visible more frequently in their silver or gold wins.)

Fury brought on a woman named Maria Hill to help them with PR. He had worked with her along with his other skaters in the past, and she was as good as had been promised. The media issues certainly weren't her fault, and in many ways, weren’t Steve’s or Peggy’s either. They answered questions with care, and made sure to mention in each interview that while they were very close friends and shared a special relationship, they had never been romantically involved. They would each laugh gently at the idea. But when they watched the footage back, there would always be something - Steve looking as if he was winking just after earnestly saying that they were strictly partners, or Peggy’s slightly too quick answer about what Steve wore to sleep in a “know your partner” trivia game - that made it seem as if they were lying.

“We’ve got no time for these goddamn conspiracies,” Phillips would bark if someone made the mistake of bringing up such things, and Steve and Peggy realized just how much he had invested in this as well.

By the time they actually got to Canada, they had one win over Wanda and Pietro when the season’s competitions were tallied, although the Maximoffs had beaten an old record of theirs by a couple of points. They all took pictures together when they arrived in Vancouver, which they let Maria put on their Facebook page, trying to act as if it wouldn’t be seen as a publicity stunt even though they really were just on their way to a Thai place for dinner.

“What does it feel like?” Wanda asked as she walked back beside Peggy, hands in the pockets of her peacoat. Steve and Pietro were in front of them, still arguing about whether potatoes were better when they were prepared as French fries or latkes. Wanda was just barely twenty, and Peggy heard childlike yearning in her voice despite what every magazine article and video profile made it clear she had been through. 

“It feels like every gold you’ve ever won,” Peggy told her, “all happening at once. And you look over and realize that the pride you feel for yourself is less than the pride you feel that you were able to win it as a team.”

Wanda nodded as if that just confirmed what she’d suspected. She linked arms with Peggy and they continued up the street.

* * *

The Maximoffs skated first, and after watching their short program, for the first time in two years, Peggy and Steve, cross-legged in his room that night, practiced what they would say if they lost.

If they did, it wouldn’t be a matter of biased judging or Steve and Peggy making mistakes. Their own short program that afternoon had gone very well. They had chosen “Shake It Out” as their music, a comeback song, triumphant. “And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back,” Peggy sang quietly as they went into their twist lift. “So shake him off,” Steve sang back as he set her on solid ice again. They were as good as they had been all season, but Wanda and Pietro had only gotten better, making small changes and hitting their elements just right. They had been skating for a long time, starting shockingly young, and they wanted it badly, for their parents who wouldn’t be there to see it and their country that was cheering them on.

There was nothing obvious the next morning that said that Steve had slept poorly. Only Peggy noticed that he blinked a bit more slowly, as if on a tiny delay. She brushed his hand with hers. “If we say we can do this…” she started.

“We can do this,” he finished, and grinned the same stubborn, open challenge of a grin she’d known for seventeen years.

The gliding opening to “At Last” had required hours with Natasha, working for just the right movement, the kind of grace so natural you wouldn’t even notice the effort. It paid off. Perhaps they weren’t the most daring or dramatic that they had ever been, but the absolute mastery was apparent and there was a feeling throughout the arena of held breath. In the footage, everyone looked riveted, maintaining minimal applause even at the height of a throw, the ease of a lift, or the perfect synch of a jump. And then, as the music swept to a close (“And you are mine...at last” into the last magical piece of orchestra) and left silence in its wake, the near audible intake of air, the lifting of the crowd to its feet. Phillips had an arm around Fury’s shoulders as Natasha applauded beside them.

Steve and Peggy noticed none of it. They hugged, laughing breathlessly, because it was exactly what needed to happen next. Their mouths were obscured, and so no one saw Steve say, “Pretty good for a last time,” or heard Peggy respond, “I told you so.” They barely remembered to turn and bow for the crowd.

They’d broken a record and the Star Spangled Banner would play through the arena, Peggy’s quiet father wrapped Steve in a bear hug, roaring, and they saw Phillips get absolutely toasted for the first time, but it felt like nearly an anticlimax. The skate had been perfect. They had made it perfect for each other.

* * *

Their competitions were finished, but they still had to stay for the skating gala. It was no hardship, spending time in a beautiful city, watching their fellow athletes compete and meeting those from other sports (there was a pair of young Canadian skaters who seemed to have a real future), having Bucky call and yell in both their ears because he’d monopolized the TV on base to watch them. The joy lasted through the whole rest of the Games.

Peggy had charmed a set of keys for herself, so late one night they got into the rink and skated around, just the two of them doing simple movements, the kind that they had been doing for so long that it was like walking.

“Now is it time for law school?” Steve asked, skating backward to watch her.

Peggy shrugged, as if just now it could barely matter. “It’s coming up on it.” They already planned to finish off the competition season and tour during the spring and summer, but she’d brought her LSAT books with her when they’d traveled all this year, having Steve officiate practice tests for her on planes and in hotel rooms. She would take the exam in the fall, and this time next year she could be in a classroom. 

After a moment of quiet skating side by side, she asked, “Have you decided?” She tried to keep the judgement from her voice, because she’d told him too many times that he had too much of a gift to once again fall into glorified housepainting as a convenient job when he felt he had nowhere else to go.

“I think,” Steve said carefully, as if it was the first time he’d spoken the words aloud, “that I’m going to try coaching.”

“You’re going to be a Phillips?” she teased with a smile.

“You think I have the temper for it?”

She skated forward quickly, looping around him and skating to a stop. She placed a hand on his arm. She wanted him to know that she was being serious. “I think you’re going to be wonderful at it.”

“Yeah,” he said, but he looked relieved. They stood for a minute, and then began circling the rink again.

“First thing you’re going to do when you get back to New York?” he asked her, as if they were still twelve-year-olds playing car games on a road trip.

“Sleep for a week, diner pancakes, and I’m turning off my phone and finally getting to read the books on my nightstand.” He laughed. “You?”

“Spaghetti at Bucky’s and a trip to the Met.” She nodded. He had dragged her to see the art enough times that one would think he’d be done, but he always looked to go back. “Thing you’re looking forward to most in retirement?”

She skated thoughtfully, quiet, then said, “I’ve been focused on using my body for most of my life, and I’ve done that carefully and well for the most part. But I’d like to have some time to use my mind.” She smiled. “Also I’ll finally have the free time to learn to drive.” 

“In the city?” Steve sounded vaguely horrified.

“Maybe I’ll go out to Long Island,” she suggested, and laughed when he looked completely horrified. “What are most excited about?”

“No more interviews, no more limelight, no more analysis of our every move,” he said immediately, and then as an afterthought, “and maybe now I can get a dog.”

“We might actually have time to find people to date now,” Peggy said idly. She had gone for ice cream with a boy once or twice in middle school, but they had both been too focused on their career to truly consider relationships. 

“Right,” he said, too slowly. Peggy looked at him oddly.

“Natasha somehow has more friends than either of us. We could ask her if any of them might work.” When he said nothing, she continued. “They’ll probably think it strange that we’re nearing thirty and have never dated, but I think we can pull it off. Olympic medals can make good small talk.” Still silence. “Of course, it will break the hearts of the fans, but I think they’ll move on soon enough—”

“What if the fans are right?” he asked abruptly.

“What?” She laughed from both the sentiment and his clumsy tone, but a little breathlessly, caught off guard.

“All of the pictures and videos… It’s not editing, and it’s not acting, not for me.” She was reminded just then of the times when they were young and Steve would watch another skater perform an impressive trick and immediately dive in to try it himself, fearless, determined, heedless of injury. “We’ve been partners for almost twenty years, Peggy, and I think I’ve been in love with you for nearly that long.”

She stopped skating, directing herself slowly over to the wall. She pivoted in a careful, complete circle, collecting herself for a moment. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“We’ve been partners for almost twenty years,” he repeated. “First I was a kid looking at the strongest, prettiest girl I’d ever seen. Then I was older and I got to work every day with the strongest, prettiest woman I’d ever seen. Skating with you has been the best part of my life, and I couldn’t take it away from us because you didn’t feel the same way or we tried and it didn’t work out.” He skated a small circle, too, looking upward and then directly at her. “I always knew that after this we weren’t going to be seeing each other every day. And I don’t want to start this new part of our lives where you get to learn to drive and go on dates without at least asking if maybe it was possible—”

“Why didn’t you say anything ten years ago? Or five years ago?” she interrupted. “We wasted so much time that we could have spent watching Phillips’s head explode.”

He laughed, because she always made him laugh. “What?”

“I’m a better actor than you,” she told him. “But not that much better.” She skated over. “It wasn’t pretend for me either.” She shook her head at herself. “But I suppose I also stayed quiet to protect the partnership.”

“Then I guess,” he said, his hands on her forearms, “that it’s good we at least got a few medals out of all of this.”

“You’ve known me for ages, Steve,” she said with quiet humor. “I could have managed it without all the drama that we’ve put ourselves through. Don’t you know by now that I can do anything I set my mind to?”

“I’ve always said,” he agreed, and stayed very still while she kissed him.

* * *

Their expo music throughout the season had been “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” because it had a good beat, a tempo that allowed for a bit of showing off, and they both remembered their mothers playing it when they were children. But with days to go before the Olympic gala, they switched to “Two of Us” by The Beatles, and just said that it seemed more appropriate.

The fans went absolutely insane, but Steve and Peggy were too busy to pay attention. They had a first date to plan, after all, as well as revenge on Fury and Natasha for betting on when they would get together. Phillips had been yelling but the money trading hands behind him had been clear, and with one glance at each other, Peggy and Steve had known that that could not stand. 

(Bucky, when they told him, put every fan to shame. Every one of Steve’s students for the next five years would eventually come into the rink for a lesson and say, with puzzlement, “Bucky says to tell you that he told you so,” then would have to put up with a grumpy coach for the rest of practice, or until his lawyer wife showed up to make him smile and to teach everyone a thing or two on the ice.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone who follows me on tumblr knows exactly where this came from. It was supposed to be 2k of “Peggy and Steve are skating partners who are In Love, but the other doesn’t know because it would Ruin The Partnership” and turned into 10k of pure OOC trash. Sorry! (Mostly for me - I’m exhausted.)
> 
> Thanks to the curators of the Figure Skating Wikia (especially the music section), figure skating fans in advance for not crucifying me for inaccuracy, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir for living lives of such pure, unadulterated, inspiring fanfic _nonsense_ , the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (like this could ever win an Oscar, please - Golden Globes AT BEST), etc...


End file.
